Hand of Prometheus
by JMK758
Summary: With this Sequel to 'INCIS' and 'Shepherd of the Lost', my Terran Empire series shifts to the west coast. Inquisitors Nell Jones and Kensi Blye embark upon an Undercover Mission. Crossover with NCIS:NO. Adult situations, violence, mature themes. No Spoilers Please!
1. Sting

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters or situations held by NCIS:LA, which was created by Shane Brennan and other artists, or any other source or entity, nor I make any money on this. Original characters are my own. Rated T for Sexual Situations and Violence. Please Review, but no Spoilers!

The Hand of Prometheus  
by JMK758  
Chapter One  
Sting

Nell Jones, elegantly perched on the bar stool in aid of the blood red gown presenting her to her best advantage, allows herself a slight leftward slouch against the polished mahogany, presenting a sultry aspect perfect to the surroundings. This more opulent of two bars outside the dining hall somewhat exceeds a five star rating, appropriate to an Officers' Club room where one is hard pressed to find anyone below the rank of Navy Captain or at least a Major of the various Services. Of course the other commissioned ranks have their room and the dining hall is eclectic, but this room caters to the ultra elite. There is not a uniform that doesn't gleam, a gown that doesn't shine in the light of three chandeliers. The variety will be broader in the larger dining room where elbows are rubbed more intently than in most palaces.

The sun is approaching the horizon, announcing the end of the day, but this evening is bright because she's determined it will be her last one.

\\\Here he comes,\\\ Eric Beale's voice sounds in her ear under her eloquently coiffed auburn hair.

"Mmm hmm," she hums. Of course her target is coming through the far door, unnecessarily directed by the Maître d'. If not she wouldn't have her gleaming ring with its dozen diamonds and one micro camera in her slouched hand pointed toward that doorway.

x

Captain Thomas Duchane stops before her and offers his hand. "You look lovely tonight, my dear."

She restrains herself, as she takes his hand to come off the stool, from quipping 'just tonight?' There's no room in her adopted persona for a smart ass. "Thank you."

The scarlet slippers, with their six inch heels, oblige her to stand balanced upon her toes, and if kept on for too long would really make her feet hurt, but looking into his eyes she's sure he won't make her wear them, or the backless gown that dips to her curvy butt and teases her legs, for very long.

The diamonds at her throat gleam and glimmer in tiny spots along the front of his white dress uniform jacket. The gold braid and medals there compete with her jewels but she's confident of coming away the winner.

She lets him look. He is, after all, paying for this and the gown has given him much of his money's worth as he'd approached. Between the long slit nearly to her right hip baring her legs from red six inch stiletto heels trimmed in tiny jewels to the top of that breathtaking slit, from her generously wide décolletage from thin shoulder straps of the sleeveless, backless gown to a point a half inch above her navel, his eyes are going exactly where the gown was designed to make them go.

With a wide open back to the gown and not much of a front, it hangs from her shoulders in sleek silken lines, yet with one sneeze this would no longer be an undercover assignment.

Hair: one hundred dollars. Jeweled high heeled shoes that lift her close enough to kiss: six hundred. Gown that slinks along her body: nineteen hundred; his money. Jewels that glitter upon her chest: do not ask but he paid for them too. The look in Duchane's eyes as he looks over his investment on their third date: priceless.

/You've got him,/ Beale's voice says into her ear. /Don't lose him./

She reaches her fingertips under her ear, a disguised adjustment of a strand turning the distraction off. Three encounters, no way is she letting him slip off her hook this evening.

Eric would fancy himself her Handler. The truth is she doesn't need handling, only the perp and a clear playing field.

x

"Would you like to eat now?"

She must still look up, six inches only brings her up so far, but she can read his eyes so well. They're focused nowhere near her raised face but to where the motion of getting off the stool has allowed her right nipple to peek out from the scarlet gown, the pink nub returning his attention.

She doesn't 'notice' his attention; it's the pressure of the gown's edge on her sensitive nub that confirms her success in the long practiced move.

"Actually, I'm not very hungry yet. I was hoping we might dance?"

"Of course."

As they turn toward the door she notices her spying nipple and quickly puts it back under cover and avoids looking into his eyes for the rest of the trek to the door. There's a fine, careful line between ingénue and slut and she's an ingénue.

Of course, he's already seen, before she left the stool, that other than the diamonds the dress is all she wears, and he's so clearly plotting to get her out of it.

Again.

So what else is new?

This evening ends this. Undercover Op over. This evening she gets the final answer.

x

The dancing is nice, he's discrete with his hands, one in hers and the other on her bare back to guide her. He hasn't slipped for a moment, no fast pet down her bare back too low to double check her lack of anything protecting her. But nice as the dancing is, it's just a warm-up - again - and she's done. Over. Finito. If she's going to get to where they can talk about the jewels - the Aztec ones, not the ones around her throat - they need more privacy.

Thus, while he's discrete, she very gradually closes the space between them. She keeps the touch of her body feather light but he's so well aware of the signals she's giving him.

Over a particularly slow dance she looks up those last inches, keeps her lips soft and gentle, the kiss warm and unsuggestive except for the way her lips so slowly, so gradually part.

When he comes away she keeps her lips parted, closes her eyes in time so he sees her face tilted up, eyes closed in dreamy need, her parted lips yearning for the return of his kiss.

He doesn't make her wait.

x

It's a careful balance, this showing she's willing if he wants her without asking him to take her away from here and have his way with her, and she accomplishes it with her so lingering kiss, with the way the tip of her tongue touches his lip almost without her will, with the so feathery touch of her breasts to his jacket.

She doesn't count the number of songs any more than notice how his lips and the movement of her breasts against his chest harden her nipples until she's sure he must feel them through jacket, shirt and all.

The moisture and heat building between her carefully shaved labia are an added bonus.

x

Ultimately - after how long? - he pulls back from the kiss but she keeps her eyes closed, head tilted back, lips yearning for his return. "Would you like to go upstairs?"

She holds her answer to a long, yearning sigh that lowers her breasts onto his chest.

xx

The elevator affords them privacy to do far more than upon the dance floor but a Captain is a take charge personality so Nell gives him that control, kisses him as he frees her breasts, right hand exploring every inch of her firm flesh, left hand through that slit to invade her labia, moans and groans and quickening sighs her symphony of surrender. His pinch of her left nipple is too sharp and distracts her but she makes herself smile against his mouth.

The doors open, she has no chance to fix her gown as he scoops her up and carries her down the vacant hall, breasts exposed by the widely spread gown, legs bare to her crotch by the fallen away slitted gown. She feels his hard chest under her hands, thinks of his harder part and must admit to herself, in the tingling and building moisture in her other lips as he carries her toward her fate, that she's crossed the line from ingénue to stripped and conquered slut.

x

He must put her down upon the red stilettos to open the door, and the moment allows her to restore her breasts behind the drape, but as he gets her inside and locks the portal she backs from his reach.

"Stand down, sailor," she whispers, admitting at the sight of him that he will not be down for some time to come. She must get the ingénue back again. She prefers ingénue.

She backs away, halts past the foot of the bed, backed by the closed white curtain. The sun has already set beyond it but she considers it a good backdrop for the red dress. She must be patient. She knows she's not going to get anything about jewels stolen from the temple of Huitzilopochtli until she takes that thing down.

But it's not going to be very long. Callen and Hanna are waiting at Duchane's home for her signal and this Op has gone on too long already.

The scarlet high heeled slippers hold her aloft, on display, hold her up in offer to him.

Very slowly, feeling her body tingle in every charged nerve and fighting to go slowly, to control the moment, Nell raises her hands to the shoulder straps, lifts them off and lowers her arms for a slow unveiling, lowers her hands to her hips. She can feel his eyes stroke her, sear her flesh and then she lets go and the scarlet gown puddles about her raised feet.

He advances on her and she receives him willingly into her arms, the kiss far more scorching than it had been downstairs.

The kiss is very pleasant, she likes fire, and she reaches down, brings her right foot up behind her and takes hold of the long heel, pulls the shoe from her foot and lets it drop to the carpet. Bare foot on the shag carpet, left leg bent now, she's parted quite enough for him to take full advantage, his fingers petting her soft lower lips as his tongue invades her upper ones. She duels her tongue with his, in no hurry to remove the final shoe, not while he's doing such a splendid job.

His fingers thrum her clitoris and undo her. Her rapid gasps fill his mouth as she tries to keep from giving way while still on her feet.

She enjoys the attention - he really is good even with mouth and hands - but he's still dressed and she's supposed to be working.

Reaching back and down, she raises her left shoe up into her hand, slips it off but lets it dangle by the rear from her finger and brings it up behind his back as she kisses him with even more fervor.

Under the guise of her kisses, rubbing herself into his questing hand, Nell tugs the heel, pulls off the long red sheath and lets it drop to the floor.

She raises and turns the shoe bottom below the back of his neck and grips it in both hands.

x

"Tell me… ungh!... something?"

"Anything," he promises into her burning mouth.

"The… uhh… jewels… ohhhhhh… are in your… ohhhhhh ahhhhhh… home… the Aztec jewels… mmmm… ar… en't they?"

Surprise pulls him back and in that instant his eyes tell her everything. Guilty. His home. Hidden and secured but revealed now.

She pulls hard.

The adamantium blade stabs deep. He was bent to her and it slips between his 4th and 5th cervical vertebrae. A hard twist severs his spinal cord. She pulls the shoe heel out as he drops to his knees and falls out upon his back. His eyes, his expression, scream his doom.

Paralyzed from neck down, lungs stopped, heart stopped, he cannot even close his eyes as death claims him.

x

Nell retrieves the scarlet sheath, rubs the blade upon his trouser leg but it must be washed before it's restored.

She steps into and pulls the slinky gown back up her body and resettles it upon her shoulders. Barefoot, she stands above the target. "The penalty for thieves."

Smiling with the satisfaction of another job well done, she closes her right hand, presses her knuckles to her left breast and brings her fist forward, level with the floor, with mocking slowness, a final salute to Captain Cadaver.

"Long Live the Empire."

x/x/x/x/x

If you are not familiar with this series, inspired by Star Trek's Terran Empire, the first two stories are 'INCIS' and 'Shepherd of the Lost'.

And if the Empire suits you, you'll want to read 'Face in the Dark Mirror' and 'Empress Sato', my prequel and sequel to 'In a Mirror, Darkly'.


	2. Discipline

Chapter Two  
Discipline

Inquisitor L2 Nell Jones of the Imperial Naval Criminal Inquisition Squadron, having stored the new gown and jewels in the capacious wardrobe room and back in her black leather uniform, inspects herself with minute care in the tall mirror as she does every day before leaving. It's more than Lange's insistence upon the presentation of the Inquisitors who serve under her Command, she would never come out of this room to let herself be seen as less than immaculate.

An Inquisitor of the INCIS is to be distinguished wherever she goes, for it is the impressive aspect of the space black leather uniform with the silver - or the gold of a One - highlights that convey silent menace to Sailors, Marines and Civilians alike.

From boots to the high collar of her jacket, the black leather is oiled to a luster, both softened and highlighted so the black gleams, making it appear blacker than when new.

The black shirt under the jacket is crisp, the creases razor sharp, the collar points hardened by the hidden triangular blades.

The closed jacket is decorated on the left sleeve with the Imperial Sword and World patch in silver with gold continents and blood red for the Earth's seas, seven inches long and starting a precise three inches from the shoulder seam. In the matching position on her right sleeve is the full color INCIS shield patch. Each of these she has replaced with each promotion, this being the fourth set and maintained in mint condition.

The silver shield at her left breast is the full color Arms of the Imperial Navy before which is the Imperial sigil, an ancient Roman silver short sword impaling the Earth from pole to pole, gold continents and red seas, both hemispheres displayed compressed. Between the northern pole and the sword's bronze guard are the letters INCIS and a black eagle spreads its wings menacingly over all. The silver backgrounded badge gleams from the meticulous weekly polishings so the INCIS sigil glitters in the light with her every movement.

The three medal pins at her right breast, set with precise balance to the Badge; Meritorious Service, Valor Under Fire and Marksmanship, glisten with their own special care.

x

The silver pistol, forward at her left hip and angled for easy right hand cross body draw, gleams with a mirror finish from the care she lavishes upon it. Its twelve bullets, needle pointed, Teflon coated .357 armor piercing rounds can slice through body armor the way her gleaming dagger pierces flesh. No pansy stunts like cowering behind car doors will interfere with her execution of the Emperor's Justice.

Her dagger is held in a leather lined bronze sheath strapped to her right pants leg so the shining hilt stays precisely level with her hand and a two inch representation of Earth is set midway so that, with the dagger in place, it reproduces the Imperial standard. The edges of the seven inch adamantium blade are so sharp she can slice a dropped sliver of paper into six pieces before it reaches the floor while the point, two microns wide, can be seen in full deadly detail only under a microscope.

In a line on her wide belt above the dagger are set twelve more upward pointing needle sharp .357 rounds but she's never needed these. Nothing has ever stood up to as much as half of the first set.

The eight pointed black cover set precisely level upon her head is meticulously cared for, the silver band glitters in the mirror while the short black visor is polished daily to its own mirror finish. The ornate full color silver backed shield, duplicated one third size on this device, is positioned precisely between her eyes and receives as much care as the shield upon her chest. Each could blind an enemy when the sun's position is right.

The black epaulets receive particular weekly attention, the black background polished as mirror fine as her calf high boots while the four silver strips, being .999 pure grade inset between the five segments of leather, receive their own special effort so they glint and glitter in the sunlight against the enhanced black backgrounds.

A more intense inspection confirms that not a scratch, mark, scuff or print mars the perfection of her uniform.

Now she may step outside.

xx

It's already night, she would otherwise be on her way home, having filed her report on the drive in, but you do not go home without making a personal report to the Chief Inquisitor at the end of an Assignment. However, she has an additional task to attend to that takes precedence.

Exchanging closed fist to left breast and extended fist salutes, more often receiving than presenting, with uniformed Interrogators or Support Personnel but seeing none of her fellow Inquisitors, she makes her way to the second floor Operations Division. Here, in this secured chamber that requires Iris blood vessel pattern identification to access, she will find Eric Beale.

The perfectly balanced steel door, rated to withstand a one ton explosion, swings away and she enters the bright florescent lit room and waits until the sensors signal the heavy barrier to close behind her.

At the other end of the long room Eric is seated before the slanted control panel that stretches nearly out of reach from his position in the centered rolling chair. Twelve screens set into the wall rise above him, three levels of four, and the wall to his left is a huge screen, eight feet high and fifteen wide upon which literally any camera's view or the output of any of the banks of computers that line the walls and the workstations before them can be brought up, then expanded to travelogue expanse or brought in close enough to count cable thick nose hairs.

The stations that surround a freestanding Tactical console in the chamber's center are vacant, normally manned by a dozen Support personnel during Alpha shift. This is Beta, and deep into it so most of the crew are on meal break, yet this is the domain of Inquisitor L3 Eric Beale, the mentor who'd first begun her training seven years ago.

x

He's still here, of course. To leave while an agent is in the field is an executable offense, that's another reason why she waited so much longer to come here. He's seated too comfortably in that rolling chair, his black jacket draped too casually over the back, his black shirt loose about the collar. The jacket's black shoulder boards, with their three silver strips, hang off the chair back, turned to her. The Imperial and INCIS patches on his upper sleeves are dulled; she believes they're the original ones that came with the jacket.

Since her first days as an L5 she'd worked here under his tutelage and they'd shared so much, particularly extras as she'd worked her way from a Five to a Four to a Three. He'd been extremely helpful in those slow but inevitable promotions. From training here exclusively as a Five to occasional Field work as a Four to full Operative at Three, she'd cultivated and maintained him, as others do, as a very useful resource while enjoying the extra benefits of their relationship.

But her promotion to a Two had come from a more useful resource, since as a Three fraternization with another Three would no longer benefit her Career.

x

She crosses the room, stops a half step behind his left side. "Eric."

He looks over his shoulder, gives her a casual look and a companionable smile. His glasses gleam briefly under the bright lights. "Hi. Welcome back." He returns his barely diverted attention to the third monitor on the bottom, which angles his head a little away from her.

"What? You don't even salute?"

"Huh?" He still gives her partial attention, focused on the activities on that monitor. All twelve are active, this one shows a ship's bridge from the forward section, looking on at the officers. "Oh. Salute. Yes." It's a touch of the knuckles of his closed fist touching his left pectoral, then little more than a twist of the wrist, ending the perfunctory gesture six inches from his chest. "So, how'd it go?" He looks back again. "I see you've changed."

"Of course I changed."

"Too bad. I'd like to have seen you in that gown." The camera in her ring, hidden among the diamonds, had never been turned toward her.

"You'd much rather see me out of it." His slow smile assures her of the so very obvious. But when she doesn't move to follow up that so sensual tone he turns back to the screens.

"But you distracted me."

"Sorry about that."

"Twice. You almost broke my train of thought."

"I have full confidence in you."

x

Her rounded side kick crashes her boot instep into the back of his neck, slams his face onto the controls, disrupts all the screens. As he bounces off she grabs his shoulders, shoves down and slams him to the floor. His head bounces with a satisfying thump and the chair makes its own loud crashes. She drops down and slams both knees upon his chest. His glasses are gone, she doesn't care where; he won't need them.

She clutches the soft front of his throat in her right hand and for emphasis digs her long nails deep into his flesh. He's silenced, mute mouth working, tongue seeking air, wide eyes terrified and pleading. He's already bleeding from nose and mouth, now she intends to hurt him.

" _Never_ interrupt me when I'm working," she grates through clenched teeth. " _Understand_?" She grips tighter, shoves the daggers of her nails about his esophagus, pierces the soft flesh. He can't answer, can't gag; he's suffocating but the terror in his wide eyes assures her that she has his attention.

"You're a Three, get that? You were a Three when I got here seven years ago, you were a Three while I advanced and you're still a Three and do you know why? It's because we don't need a Tech, even Operations Chief, any higher so a Three is as high as you will ever be."

She tightens her grip further, digs deeper, feels warm blood seep under her nails and sees it slip toward the back of his neck as she grinds her knees onto his chest.

Not yet satisfied by the pleading in his eyes, she considers piercing deeper, the blood covering her fingertips.

He dares not fight back. The penalty for striking a superior officer – he'll take the beating.

"I'm an Inquisitor Level _Two_ , you're a Three forever and if you don't understand what that means it means I out _rank_ you." His blood trickling over her fingertips is heated by his fear. "You _used_ to be my Instructor, now you follow _my_ Orders perfectly and to the letter. And if you ever again fail to salute me properly and give me the respect I'm due I will–"

"The floor is no place for an Inquisitor, Mr. Beale," observes a deceptively mild female voice from over their heads. Nell looks up, Beale won't have the angle with her spearing hand crushing his throat.

x

Chief Inquisitor Henrietta Lange stands at the open door, resplendent in her space black uniform. Shoulder boards of gold, solid bars these, gleam on her shoulders and a double line of medals glitter on her right side. The shield at her jacket's left, the full color Arms of the Imperial Navy with short sword impaling the Earth superimposed on it, the letters INCIS between north pole and sword's guard with a black winged eagle over all is also gold, as is the matching though smaller device centering the black eight pointed cover, and both gleam ominously in the florescent lights. The band over the short black visor is also gold metal, a characteristic it shares with Level Ones. It doesn't gleam, Nell has noticed, but it doesn't have to.

Nell leaps off Beale's chest to Attention and he drags air loudly. Her fist against her left breast a smart smack, her fist extension hard and precise. She can feel his blood on her palm.

Eric, still wheezing, is slower to rise but he does hurry and his salute is as sharp, his breath volume fought down, his Attention stance ramrod straight and ice frozen. Many have deeply regretted offering less. They hold the outstretched salute until she'll return it.

Lange crosses the long room, her pace slow and deliberate as the steel door swings shut and Beale fights himself to silence. The two Inquisitors, salutes held, remain still as statues. The Chief Inquisitor personifies a thermonuclear bomb, small in stature but devastating in effect.

x

When she stops before them Nell's eyes are locked on a line that runs inches above her chief's head, Eric's line a head higher. Lange's eyes are lined upward to the man's throat.

"Your face is bloody, Inquisitor Beale, and your neck is bleeding into your open shirt."

That voice, an illusion of mildness, is known to make Storm Troopers tremble.

"Chief Inquisitor." He dares not move his eyes, locked as they are on a point on the distant steel door, nor does he dare move his arm but struggles to keep his fist from fluttering a single millimeter.

The blood from his nose, and from his mouth where he'd split his lip on the console, had been from that initial impact before Jones had seriously begun hurting him. He can feel the blood from his neck run downward, seep into and very likely ruin his black shirt.

He's not sure where his glasses are, his cover is on the freestanding Tactical board beyond Lange but he needs one no more than the other with his doom this close.

But Lange's head does move and she looks to the display screens which reveal no useful information since his face had smashed into the controls and her expression, even without his glasses, is appropriately sour.

She lowers her gaze to his jacket crumpled upon the floor as it had landed from that initial crash, her manner very deliberate. Eight seconds later she turns her head slightly right and she's staring at the overturned chair.

The room is utterly silent when she again looks up to his unmoving eyes. Ten seconds. Fifteen. She turns to Nell, whose fist stays locked slightly over the bomb's eyes. Ten more seconds, twenty, Nell feels her own doom in every tick of the clock.

"There is blood on your nails and fingers."

"Chief Inquisitor."

The blood is further than that, she feels it smearing her palm. When she opens her hand it'll be well marked but for the moment the woman can only see her fingertips.

Is she going to order her to cut those finger ends off?

She might.

x

"I came to inform you both that we expect, in the morning, the visit of a Deputy Grand Inquisitor."

"Owen Granger, Ma'am?" As Senior Inquisitor present she has the right to speak for the room, but what causes such a tone from the woman? A visit from the Deputy Grand is hardly unusual. Owen Granger is a terror, of course, but he's a familiar terror. They've weathered Granger storms before, they will again.

She's occasionally thought the man's visits to this small and specialized division are caused by a liking for their Chief. And if he does hold a liking for the woman before them, so much the better.

"No. Deputy Grand Inquisitor Dwayne Cassius Pride."

x

This is not unusual, this is _extraordinary_. There are four Deputies under Grand Inquisitor Lee Gibbs and they divide the Continental United States squarely in fine disregard for the twenty nine territorial borders; Jennifer Shepherd commands the Northeast Region, Russell Cransford the Northwest, Owen Granger the Southwest while Dwayne Pride rules the Southeast Region. For a Deputy Grand Inquisitor to cross territories to come to a facility without the Regional D.G.I. is disturbing in the extreme.

Owen Granger must be throwing a fit.

By the way: is Owen Granger alive?

x

Her arm aching from holding the salute for so long, she risks "Chief Inquisitor?"

"Inquisitor Jones?"

Her tone seems to invite question and she has many. She hopes she's not wrong. "Why is he coming?" She tries not to think that the morning suddenly seems so soon. She mentally kisses her bed goodbye.

"I do not know."

Lange's tone announces how much this irks her and they hold their breaths. She looks to Beale. "Bring Callen and Hanna back," then up under Nell's fist, "report to me when you get cleaned up."

"Yes, Chief Inquisitor," they say in careful unison.

She turns and starts out, still has not acknowledged their held salute, but then she halts, still facing the door. "Inquisitor Beale."

"Chief Inquisitor."

She looks back at the blood still trickling from his nose, mouth and neck, at his shirt, at the jacket on the floor, at the overturned chair, at his motionless eyes. "Clean this place up."

"Yes, Chief Inquisitor."

She turns, stalks across the room, the door opens for her and closes after.

x

They're left behind at stiff Attention, at Salute, Eyes Front.

Ten seconds.

Twenty seconds.

"Ma'am?" he whispers as quietly as he can.

"What?"

"What do we do?"

Ahead of them the steel door swings open. Lange stands on the other side. Her smile of satisfaction is small, but it's there. She raises her fist, slowly returns the salute and the door closes.

Eric tries to keep his sigh quiet as he lowers his thoroughly aching arm. Nell is silent.

"What do you think?" he dares ask. He sounds afraid that she'll remember where they left off. Good.

Nell steps toward the door but pauses at the freestanding Tactical console and picks up his cover. Of course neither the silver metal band over the visor nor the metal device in the middle are polished like hers are, probably haven't been since the last Inspection, nor does the dull visor reflect the bright ceiling lights. She flings it at him, its spin allowing him to catch it and put it on his head. He looks even worse with it on.

Ignoring this action, she looks closely at the console and runs her finger along the top. She inspects her bloodied finger and looks to Beale. "Clean this place up."

xx

Striding down the corridor toward the stairs that lead to the main level, acknowledging the salutes of her fellows, she reaches the gym as the door opens and L1 Kensi Blye, clad in tan workout pants and a black sports bra, steps out. Now it's Nell who crashes to a halt and executes a smart fist to chest followed by outward punch salute.

Blye acknowledges it but not as sharply, still precise but with more ease as befits a superior. "You're back."

"I'm back."

"How did it go?"

"Guilty, of course. I reported to Callen, he and Hanna are likely searching the forfeited house now. Thanks to his generosity, not that it was his to share, we've netted a nice gown and some very nice jewels."

"I'd like to have seen you in it."

She gives the taller woman a slow smile. "You'd much rather see me out of it." She ignores that it's the same observation she'd made to Beale.

"You know it." Kensi reaches out, hooks her finger between the buttons of her jacket and draws her close.

Already ignited by Duchane and Beale, two different thrills yet both unsatisfied, she's very ready. However she meets the taller woman's eyes, well aware of the finger hooking her.

"I'm supposed to report to Lange."

"Then we won't take too long."

Kensi pulls her into the gym and locks the door, turns to Nell and their mouths meet and tongues duel, both women too aware of time. Kensi goes for the easier choice, undoes the uniform belt even as Nell slips her palms up the taller woman's bare stomach, catches the bra and lifts it up and off. The kiss breaks for but an instant and when it renews with greater force Kensi has the pants opened and shoves down even as Nell pushes the sweat pants over rump and down far enough.

Their kiss boils as right hands reach for softer, wetter lips, Nell's left hand to a firm breast while Kensi snakes her hand under Nell's black shirt and their open mouthed kiss isn't enough to muffle increasingly fervent cries.


	3. Pride

Chapter Three  
Pride

The interlude hadn't taken long and when they've showered and resumed their black uniforms and accouterments each inspects the other for signs of their distraction, but when Kensi goes to and unlocks the gym door Nell makes a final detailed inspection in the mirror by the door.

"What, don't you trust me?" Kensi quips.

"Always, but with Lange you can't be too careful." She's noticed that the gold band fronting Kensi's cover between metal shield device and short visor doesn't gleam as hers would if she had one instead of the silver band Twos and Threes use.

She eyes the five golden strips that slice the taller woman's shoulder boards, longs again for them upon her own shoulders, but it's Kensi's words that grip her attention.

"Damn right. Come on before we're really late."

"We?"

"She wants to see me too, and I have this feeling she didn't mean separately."

"Then let's not keep her."

x

And so they do not, but as they approach the steel doors downstairs, the ones with the polychrome on gold INCIS shield replica on the left door and the larger sword through Earth Imperial Standard on the right, Nell concentrates on keeping from her face that Lange's armed and armored Bodyguard stands at attention outside. The man's military bearing, from short cropped hair under mirror polished black adamantium helmet to body armor proof against any projectile to equally polished boots are as stiff as he usually is.

"Hi." Kensi greets the man casually but his only concession to formal attention is a slight turning of his head so he meets her eyes.

"Ma'am," is polite but he doesn't salute either of them, for that would entail using his right hand. When on duty, and many times when off, if not armed with the dreadful rifle he carries across his chest, finger always at the trigger, his right hand never strays from the butt of the pistol at his belt.

The only time he'd focused on Nell was on their initial approach and his attention was on her gun in left holster, her dagger in the right thigh sheath with hilt at hand level and, less so, on the line of pointed silver shells on the wide black belt over the dagger. Now he attends upon the taller, gold highlighted Level One Inquisitor.

He is as precise in his manner as he is merciless in the performance of his duty. Hard, remorseless, stoic, bereft of conscience or mercy, none of the tender emotions ever penetrate his armor. Henrietta Lange has but to say 'kill him' or 'kill her' and that person, be it enemy or lover, is immediately dead.

The space black armor emphasizes his dark alienation from humanity and typifies the remorseless, humorless, inflexible personality of Martin Deeks.

"Deeks," Kensi says, her manner playful, "am I ever going to get a smile out of you?"

He stares into her eyes, his expression the empty one he uses when he kills. "I am smiling, ma'am."

"Of course you are."

He reaches back to turn the knob on the right door with the Imperial sigil and to break the seal so the door slips an inch open. It's unnecessary, as if to say 'get in and shut up'.

x

Inside the mahogany and book lined room Chief Inquisitor Lange, seated behind her desk, is taller than she would be when standing, this aided by the elevated platform in the rear portion of the room combined with a six inch higher than common desk and corresponding chair and footrest. If someone were to seat himself in the single seat before that desk, that person is on the main floor level and consequently must look up to meet Lange's eyes.

Were someone to dare to inquire, she might say the arrangement is so she may meet her visitors without having to crane her neck. Nell doubts she knows anyone in INCIS so foolhardy as to ask.

The seat is a rare honor accorded to high ranking visitors. In her seven years here, Nell has never been invited to use it, not that with her stature and the twelve inch artificial enhancement the Chief has to look up at her anyway. In fact, she doubts that any L1 uses it with any regularity with the possible exception of Lead Inquisitor Grisha Alexandrovich Callen.

As in all things, there are ranks and there are ranks.

As the door swings shut behind them the women snap to attention, their salutes textbook perfect, the punches precise and synchronized. "Inquisitors L1 Kensi Blye and L2 Nell Jones report to the Chief Inquisitor, by Command," Kensi announces.

"Come here."

x

Lange shifts her gaze to Nell, her first look at her since Operations. "Compliments on the Duchane matter."

"Thank you, Chief Inquisitor."

"I would have been happier to have independent corroboration of his guilt before he'd been dispatched."

"Noted." She will no more offer explanations than she would apologize. Her report had been detailed and complete and apologies are never acceptable. An Inquisitor is either efficient enough to succeed or pays the penalty for failure, so to do more is inefficient and superfluous.

"Inquisitors Callen and Hanna have found sufficient evidence of Duchane's guilt."

The doors across the room open and the Inquisitors, on the expression of their Chief that the interruption is not expected, whirl with their silver weapons leading.

Nell sees through her side vision that Lange, still seated behind the armored desk, also covers the door with her own weapon.

The two doors are open wide and two men in black armor identical to Deeks' snap to Attention inward on either side of them, their weapons held to their chests in salute. Though they neither move nor speak, their attitudes say explicitly that the women had better re-holster their weapons.

Now.

Their weapons are, like Deeks', Tracker Smart Rifles. They contain computer targeting systems that identify a target and program the bullet's trajectory. Once locked on a target, the bullet unerringly finds it.

At first glimpse of the man who strides through the door both women rapidly transfer their weapons to left hands and they peripherally see Henrietta Lange reholster her weapon and rise. The three women execute precise salutes which the man does not return as he advances to the desk. Blye and Jones move far enough to each side and stand at attention bookending the official, their pistols transferred back to right hands and held to their chests in precise armed salute.

The man between them is tall with close cropped hair and square face chiseled in living stone. His uniform is similar to Lange's except for the braided gold rather than bars thick at epaulets and wrists, but the wide and gleaming bands on his wrists are split around into two rather than the wide solid band worn by Grand Inquisitor Lee Gibbs.

The four rows of medal pins on his chest show an impressive range of accomplishment and honors.

He returns the salute toward Lange, allowing Blye and Jones to reholster and the three to come down to Attention, yet his slow gesture had the definite air of a punch.

x

It is said that the mind imprints itself upon the face and, like the well known portrait of INCIS' Grand Inquisitor, this is not a face made for smiling.

Rather the steel and flint eyes are narrow, a look as set in as the vertical frown creases between those eyes. The rectangular stone face announces a man who has kept his temper tight for so long that his visage will ease in neither sleep nor death.

The impression Deputy Grand Inquisitor Dwayne Cassius Pride perpetually presents is that life has never been kind to him and he will exact his revenge.

x

"Deputy Grand Inquisitor," Lange, still at Attention, greets him formally. "I had not expected you until morning." The carefully modulated tone is one of observation; by no means can it be construed as reproval.

"This is important." His voice, like face and body, is granite.

"Of course." Her tone conveys that nothing out of the ordinary has taken place.

Uninvited, Pride seats himself in the only chair, a moment later glancing forward, right and left at the three women. "At ease."

Their shift from one formal posture to the other, left foot planted 14 inches to the side, hands crossed right over left before them, is in proper unison. Pride looks to Lange from crown to waist, the rest hidden by the desk, to the L1 at his left, to the L2 at his right, examines them minutely for nearly a minute until he gets to "As you were."

Lange reseats herself, Blye and Jones remain facing him rather than their Chief, attentive without being at Attention. "May I present Inquisitors One Kensi Blye and Two Nell Jones." It is distinctly not a question, a fine point of protocol and Pride acknowledges them with brief nods. "I was about to give them their assignments."

"I have them," he declares and displays the data rod in his previously closed fist. "Your current Operation is postponed."

"Yes, sir."

x

"Two days ago Top Secret Military Files were stolen from Georgia." Pride's words are intense, sharp enough to draw blood. "We caught some of the spies, but several committed suicide before they could be interrogated."

Nell sees without moving more than her eyes, head toward Kensi, that her Chief has many questions but no one in any way wise interrupts the Deputy Grand.

"One spy got away. He's been traced here."

With that declaration Pride stops and Lange risks an inquiry. "Do we know who the spies work for?" There's a suitably short list of countries not yet crushed, which the Emperor allows a measure of autonomy so long as they swear fealty to the Empire and obey Imperial Orders.

That is, until the Emperor gets around to crushing them.

"France."

"And our part?" She won't ask why they have a part or why he and not Owen Granger is here to give them this assignment.

"You have a very definite role to play."

"And that is?"

Pride stands, a sudden movement. "We'll cover the rest in your Operations."

xx

When Henrietta Lange leads Pride, Blye and Jones past the two guards bookending the door she glares up at Deeks, assuring him by that look that he will very soon pay the price for his allowing the unannounced entry of the Deputy. He could hardly keep him out, lacking a specific order to do so; it is the failure to announce that he will pay for. She hopes he had been ordered to do so, for though he is usually a very satisfactory Personal Guard, he shall pay with either a pound of flesh or with his life.

But as they cross the corridor out to the stairs leading upward, two men enter through the main door.

Callen, the shorter of the two, is Lead Inquisitor, first among the four, a role he carries with all due gravity. His gold accented uniform shows evidence that he'd been wearing it all day and by his mien that he'd been looking forward to getting out of it long before this. The taller black man beside him has already removed his black cover, his black hair announcing the need for an overdue trim, yet he yanks the cover back on as they halt, snap to attention and salute the Deputy Grand Inquisitor.

"Come with us," is Pride's greeting and the female Field Inquisitors hold a step back as Callen and Hanna insert themselves directly behind Pride and Lange. The three bodyguards take up the end.

x

The steel door yields to Lange's retinal scan. Though the door weighs more than three hundred pounds, it is so balanced that a single hand can move it should power to the maglock fail and the thick manual bolts not be engaged.

Nell sees past Hanna's huge back Eric Beale leap to his feet and execute a precise salute, that the marks of her nails have scabbed over above his closed jacket, yet the caution in his eyes is aimed more to her than to the man whose iron fist grips a quarter of the country.

Pride returns the gesture as he strides into the bright chamber and hands Beale the data rod. "Put this information on the main screen."

"Yes, sir."

When Pride turns to Lange and her four Inquisitors, his voice is as intense as his eyes are hard. "The issue is Espionage," he declares for the benefit of Callen and Hanna. "Someone aboard the Battleship INS Prometheus is part on a Conspiracy to Steal Military Secrets." The capitals come like physical blows, the phrases imbued with an intensity that might cut if directed at any of them. "The Prometheus is to meet with the Ninth Fleet off Australia, but the information is Top Secret. The Admiralty cannot risk it being known to exist, let alone to have been Copied." The copying of the unidentified files seems to be a personal affront.

On the huge screen before them appears an image of what used to be three once white uniformed sailors whose bodies and attire show the full effects of Imperial Inquisition. "These three refused to reveal their plot and, unfortunately, the Interrogators grew overzealous in their questioning." Here Pride becomes even more emphatic. "They have been disciplined for their failure." The image of the four black uniformed Interrogators is even more hideous than that of their charges. Granted such men are of a lower order, equivalent to common soldiers against the elite Inquisitors, but the fellowship still plays hard on those who must contemplate it.

Pride leaves the image up to sear their minds. "All we do know is that the information was smuggled out of Georgia and into the hands of a French agent. We do not know the identity of the agent, though we are certain he is aboard the Prometheus. It's the only ship due to depart tomorrow from Naval Base Archer." An image of the Battleship docked at an unnamed port is a mercy, as it clears the lesson for failing Pride from the screen.

"Normally we would seize and search the ship, but we can reveal neither the information's existence nor its loss.

"The Prometheus will deploy tomorrow at 0800. You two," he glares at Callen and Hanna, his tone like a sword thrust, "will board the ship in your own personae and find it. Reveal _nothing_ about your assignment, not even to the Shipboard Inquisitor."

"Yes, sir," Callen, as senior, acknowledges for the team.

"And since this Unit specializes in Covert Operations you two," he shifts that intense scowl to Blye and Jones, "will join the ship as new Petite Officers." No one is foolish enough to mention the irony that that ancient rank is borrowed from their former best allies in their war against the American aborigines.

Pride pulls from his jacket pocket two data rods and pushes them into the women's hands. "Memorize your personae."

"Yes, sir," Kensi says.

Jones' input is not requested.

"Understand that the spy is to be captured _Alive_. With the loss of his co-conspirators, he is the sole source of information. We Must know what was stolen and for whom it is intended. It's probable the next link in the chain is Australia. Though it's part of the Empire," he announces in an 'of course' tone; there's little left on Earth that is not Imperial domain, "the continent was originally a French Political Penal colony up to 73 years ago. There's still a strong pro-France leaning among the people that is yet to be eradicated."

ooo

France has never properly forgotten its glory days some two hundred years ago when it had been an empire in its own right. While the early American Empire under the first Emperor George Washington was flexing its collective muscles, Emperor Lucien Bonaparte, having ousted his militarily savvy but politically inept brother Napoleon, had expanded his domain to take on its island neighbors even before touching Spain, hitting that larger territory from both sides. More and more of the rich African Continent, India and many of the territories to the east then fell like dominoes while America took in more and more of the territories of the red skinned aborigines, from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans. It cut the north off from the tremendous territory to the south, a continent in its own right, and conquered each in turn. It then conquered all of the Pacific islands which territories fell with pathetic ease, establishing dominion over everything from the Arctic to the Antarctic continents before turning its attention further westward.

A hundred seventy years after its establishment under Emperor Washington, the American Empire ultimately took on the fancifully named Empire of the Sun. Ultra-long range bombers, launched from a base on the former Hawaiian Kingdom's island of Oahu, scored a devastating victory.

While Japan's Emperor Hirohito and his people were distracted by their seemingly interminable bickering with the latest (and last) of the Chin dynasties, seven aircraft launched from Pearl Harbor, ignored for the moment the French colony island of Australia and flew further west. While Hirohito and his Generals and Admirals were looking west at Chin, the bombers came up behind them and on August 6, 1945 dropped fourteen of the fruits of American Empire Ingenuity. Tokyo, Nagasaki, Yokohama, Hiroshima, Yokosuka, Nagoya and Kobe all disappeared into virtually simultaneous atomic clouds. Japan fell before it learned that it was threatened.

Not to leave a job half done, the planes continued westward and the people of Beijing, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghi, Chongqing, Hangzhou and Wuhan were greeted by their ancestors.

Before radiation levels dropped off enough to attend to the rebuilding of those cities, Imperial forces set to work establishing their expanded dominion. But first the Empire had to contend with an unexpected development. Much to the surprise of the Empire what was left of Japan, rather than being completely cowed into submission by the awesome nuclear might of its unexpected enemy, adopted a collective 'Victory or Death' mentality.

x

It was a move that quite defied American logic, for the country was in no position to launch a counterattack and never would be. While swallowing up Korea, Vietnam and the other small leftovers, Imperial forces were harried by Japanese survivors whose efforts amounted to little more than pinpricks.

But there comes a time when a foe, pricked often enough, slaps back and it was Emperor Joseph McCarthy who finally raised the hand. Since in 'Victory or Death' Japanese victory was impossible, he gave them death.

Through two months of 1947 all Japanese males, from fetus to old men in hospices, wherever located throughout the Empire, were systematically hunted down and slaughtered. Females, having their uses, were permitted to live. Over the decades mixed blood men - and female replacements generation by generation - were conceived, born and grew to age to repopulate the islands.

But the pure blooded Japanese race is extinct.

x

In the meantime America, strong in its dominance of the Western Hemisphere and of the land as far as the western border of Chin, turned its attention to the ever contending Empires of France and Israel.

Between them these two Dictatorships, a Theocratic one dating back thousands of years to their King Saul the Terrible and the two century old dynastic Bonaparte Empire, following the traditional war policy of 'Conquer or Obliterate', had brought everything from Ireland to the border between the five 'Stans' on the western border of America's Chin and from the European Hegemony's northern border through the African continent under their ever contending controls. The standard, of course, being to use all military resources of arms and personnel to fight in later battles, each became larger and more powerful with every battle to where they essentially won upon arrival, vastly outnumbered and outgunned forces wisely surrendering on sight to be incorporated into the whole. Ultimately all lands in the former Europe owed fealty to either Israel or France.

Open hostility between these two superpowers broke out in 1997 and while the American Empire sat back and watched, Israel and France and their various territories pounded one another while America, with all existing resources of every other conquered nation, built up and reinforced their might. Then, on September 11 of 2001, when Israel and France were left like two punch drunk prizefighters staggering dazed about the ring, America strolled in and smashed both to the mat.

x

But while victorious, America had its hands full with half the planet already under its dominance and was not yet ready to assume full control of the globe, and so Emperor John Anderson, who had succeeded to the throne years before when his contenders Ronald Reagan and James Carter, following the assassination of Gerald Ford, both inexplicably dropped from sight within two days of one another, made his famous decision. If Israel and France swore eternal fealty to THE Empire, today controlled by Emperor Todd Akin, and maintained the Pax Imperium, they could keep their territories intact and squabble as they liked in any way short of open war. To ensure this, everything long of a cap pistol was confiscated, forcing each to rebuild - if they could. Anderson divvied up the land, did some rearranging of holdings just to show that he could, then left the two vassal fiefdoms to carry on until the day would come when he or his successor would smash them.

It was not a perfect solution by any means. Each side, stinging at the arbitrary rearrangements of their borders and holdings and unable to give up the battles of centuries, continues to stab at the other with newly built weapons while also trying to curry favor with the Empire while plotting with covert methods how to take down the big wolf and rule in its place.

In fact, the sole thing holding France and Israel back from taking aggressive action now are the facts that they cannot yet mount a successful thrust against America and a failure will certainly result in the atomic carpet bombing of that country, creating deep lakes filled in by the Atlantic or the Mediterranean.

ooo

"France must _not_ get the information their agents stole," Pride bites. " _You_ four are to retrieve it _and_ the agent and return _both_ to this building _Undamaged_. I want him interrogated _Properly."_ He signals the end of the briefing with a fist to his chest and a hard punch forward. "Long Live the Empire."

" _LONG LIVE THE EMPIRE_!"

/*/*/*/*/

A/N: Since Scott Bakula is the only NCIS actor ever to portray an Imperial Officer (Star Trek: Enterprise 4:18 & 19), I simply pulled his appearance and manner directly from Cmdr. Jonathan Archer.


	4. Uniforms

Chapter Four  
Uniforms

A half hour later, well into true night, Inquisitor L2 Nell Jones closes the file on her office's desktop computer and rubs her aching eyes. She'd hoped, when she'd returned after sunset, to report to Chief Inquisitor Henrietta Lange the final deposition of her Undercover case of the stolen Aztec jewels, go home and get some much needed sleep. Now she has the biography of the fictitious Petite Officer Second Class Elizabeth Willoughby swimming in her head and the need to leave by Five Hundred hours to report to the INS Prometheus, a Battleship docked at Naval Base Archer and to establish herself before it sails at Eight.

It is fortunate that the information on Willoughby is sparse; she's committed it to memory, then tugs the data strip from its port, thereby corrupting the information stored in it into an unintelligible mash that will require sophisticated techniques to recover, and will yield the searcher little. She turns off the computer rather than shuts it down to clear the unsaved information from active memory.

She stands, right hand tugs the silver gun from its cross body securement before her left hip and sets it on the desk. She'll have to sleep here tonight in the daybed at the left wall, so she starts around the desk to cross the room to lock the door, but the portal swings inward and halts her at the desk's rear corner.

Her first thought is annoyance at the unannounced intrusion, the second is that she's already set the pistol down beyond comfortable reach and the last is the sense of the inevitable as she sees black uniformed L1 Grisha Callen enter, his gold highlights gleaming in her avarice. She brings her closed right fist to her left breast, then out at full extension to him.

Saluting is an art, and she doesn't let show in face or manner that in the textbook acknowledgment of his greater rank she is picturing punching his throat.

x

"You killed Duchane too soon," Callen declares. "Sam and I had to search the entire house."

"Couldn't have been too difficult, you were only two hours behind me."

Callen stalks closer and for a moment Nell wonders if the flippant answer had been a good idea. She keeps her right hand close to, but not obviously too close to, her adamantium dagger strapped to her right thigh, pommel at palm height.

"Your attitude is going to keep you from getting anywhere, Two."

It's a thinly veiled epithet, far milder than she'd laid upon Beale, for though she is a Field Operative she is one rank below him or Hanna or Blye. By rights she should have been advanced, she does the same work and the lack of that gold stings, but there is little she can do about it.

"It was a judgment call," she declares instead, unwilling to back down even though he's less than an arm's length away. She keeps her hand still, four inches from the dagger pommel. It's a careful balance; he's close enough to be a danger, Callen _is_ a sadist and she knows that any woman who lets him get this close while alone runs horrible risk, but if she misreads him and draws prematurely he'll give her ample reason, over several hours, to regret her final mistake.

She has, in fact, been with him for only one stretch of time, when she'd sought his help in advancing from a Level Three to a Two and out of Operations to a Full Field Inquisitor. She hadn't known then what he was like off duty, she'd been too green, too much a girl and hadn't deeply researched him beyond the basic accessible information. She'd seen him solely as Field Director of Blye and Hanna, first among equals. She'd thought him to be an easy mark for her nubile charms (she'd seen his eyes on her body a hundred times) and she'd believed his implication that she could buy her Two with the coin of her body and several trysts, a move that had worked so well with Beale from Five through to Three.

He'd drawn it out through several torturous sessions where she'd learned too much, and he'd come through only when, after a final grueling seven hour interview that she'd thought would break her, she'd won her Two. But she hadn't been able to enjoy her promotion; it had taken an additional five weeks for her breasts, her butt and her vagina to heal.

He doesn't use any of the traditional 'trappings' either; everything he does he does with his hands and other parts.

Eyes on his, she sees again that lack of mercy she's come to expect. And though she would return one for one, or try to, this time it is prudent to slowly move her hand away from the dagger, five inches, six, eight, ten.

She reaches for the top of her chair, turns it and, still searching his eyes for what his hands will do, she slowly sinks into it, now looking up to him, silent, the she-wolf turning over and showing her throat.

"Be ready on time," he commands. He turns and walks out her office door with the final insult of leaving it open.

She sits behind her desk, doesn't move to go close the door. The taste is bitter and she can't push it down.

xxx

Nell closes the top button of the white uniform half shirt and glares at the garment in the Wardrobe Room's tall mirror. As Kensi, wearing her own white two piece Petite Officer uniform, turns to her she declares with full vigor "I _Hate_ the Navy."

"Why?" Kensi asks.

She'd thought she'd made her position clear when she'd first drawn the hanger from the bar and glared at the Petite Officer Second Class white uniform, unable to consider it more than an Undercover costume, yet still the woman asks.

"I joined INCIS so I would wear a decent uniform."

The white garments are split, white _miniskirts_ below, while the half-shirts are each hardly more than halter tops above midriff that come to directly under their breasts, requiring bands of elastic sewn in to keep them from flashing everyone around them every time either raises an arm.

The shirt breast pockets - someone was being too damned literal - are places she'll never keep anything.

The half sleeves of her summer uniform - when is it _not_ summer in Los Diablos? - display the red double chevrons that touch the hems of the sleeves while an inch down from her left shoulder is the Imperial signet patch while the right contains the emblem of the Prometheus, a yellow-orange blaze held in an open right hand.

The sole differences between their uniforms are the three red chevrons on Kensi's arms and the short row of medal bars above the pocket before her left breast.

"What's burning you," Kensi asks, "that I outrank you?"

"Of course not. You always outrank me."

"Then what," she asks with a companionable smile, half banter and half shoot-the-breeze, "that I have more medals than you?"

" _One_ would be more than me."

"Would you like one? I don't care." She reaches to unpin one of them. It's a costume, she hadn't earned any of them.

INCIS medals are more explicit, you know what they're for and they need no interpretation.

"No, that's not it."

"Then what's got you in a funk? A First Class and a Second Class are less noticeable than two new Firsts."

Nell raises her hands over the uniform's short top. "It's demeaning."

Kensi smiles to ease her ire. "You have a cute belly." She looks below the skirt with its right uptilted hem that leaves her blade accessible. The white material, too light to make a _decent_ skirt, flutters about her uppermost thighs when she moves, rides low on her left leg - if fingertip length can be fantasized as being low - but on her right side it's short enough to clear her dagger which is strapped to her upper thigh in the right position to leave the pommel at her palm. The white shoes are sensible for a moving, wet surface if hardly flattering by a millimeter. At least she'd managed to switch her INCIS adamantium dagger for the Imperial Naval issue, declaring the pommels similar enough that no one would notice and not caring if they did.

"And very nice legs. Maybe you'll nab more than a spy on this trip."

"Cute belly." The disgust is palpable. "Emperor Akin made this change, damn him anyway and–"

" _Are_ _You_ _Out_ _Of_ _Your_ _Mind_?" is a frantic stage whisper as Kensi waves her to silence. "You do Not _damn_ the Emperor, not even in here!"

Nell would protest but it'd be stupid. INCIS's mandate is to ensure the loyalty of the Navy and its land-use Storm Troopers. She realizes she's an idiot for speaking aloud. Todd Akin, no matter what she might think of things like his ever increasing herd of conscripted cuntubines, all brought on through 'legitimate' means, is the be all and end all of power. She can thank - whatever since there is no God, not since Empress Madalyn Murray O'Hair banned it from the Earth back in the 1960's - for a friend like Kensi.

Callen would turn her in to face punishment, and he'd gladly wield the whip, if he'd been here – not that either woman would allow that sexual sadist in while they were changing.

"I think it's sexy," Kensi covers, checking her uniform in the full mirror.

But even warned, Nell can't contain her disgust. "Sexy. You mark my words; in ten years this style will be gone and you will _never_ see it again."

xxx

Riding in the rear of the black official INCIS vehicle, seated beside her partner, Nell reviews in her mind the scanty information on Elizabeth 'Betty' Willoughby when Callen announces "End of the line" and pulls to the curb.

She looks about. The residential street lined with one story houses and manicured lawns looks nothing like Naval Base Archer. "Where are we?"

"Five miles from the base, straight ahead," Hanna tells her, not bothering to glance back.

"Can't have two Petite Officers show up in an INCIS vehicle," Callen enjoys informing her far too much.

"He's right," Blye says as she gets out on the street side and rounds the car to the curb.

"Five _miles_?"

"Don't be late," Callen advises with his usual gentlemanly kindness.

"Oh, no, we won't be," she bites as she steps out onto the curb. She doesn't slam the door, that would be petty, but some day Callen will reach into an open door.

xxx

While the men, of course, go directly to the battleship in the black official vehicle and make excellent time, even in spite of the inch thick double reinforced chassis and armored under plating, the women take a bus to a block from the outer gates of the base and then, when they finally clear 'Pass and ID', they walk the three quarters of the mile to the docks.

They make the huge ship at 0717, forty three minutes before it's set to withdrew from the dock.

As they ascend the gangplank Nell outwardly ignores the Petite Officer of the Watch, a PO3. Even though they're dressed, hardly a term, as Petite Officers they outrank the kid who seems barely out of diapers, yet they salute the position if not the man, for an OD or a POOW does have a measure of authority as the guardian of the entrance.

"You're Late," he snaps at them.

"Excuse me?" As a First Class Kensi uses the right amount of outrage at his tone.

"You're due at 0700," he says, his eyes significantly on the small black canvas packs that they carry, which denote that they are new to the ship. A normal black canvas sea pack is large enough to contain a few essentials; toiletries, labeled underwear and so forth. An experienced Sailor knows not to count upon being issued properly sized underwear but to bring her own to a new berth until she learns the Quartermaster's sense of humor.

"You are not to come sauntering aboard when you feel like it." Kensi stares at the man, eyes to eyes, but he doesn't back down before a superior. _"Well,_ get _moving_."

x

As they walk away neither woman can miss that three men, ensigns all, board the ship before they're out of earshot, and these are given a proper salute and they respond with half nods to their fellow, which further aggravates the younger, forcibly silenced Inquisitor.

Had she boarded in her space black uniform with its silver highlights _she_ would have received the salute and very apprehensive eyes.

x

"Don't let it rile you," Kensi advises sotto vocé as they make their way down the first of several companionways toward Women's territory. The material of their skirts, fingertip length on the left side but high enough on the right to clear the hand high pommels of their daggers, are light enough to flutter about their legs and seem designed to catch any stray breeze. With the winds on the deck of a ship at even half speed, they will spend all their time indoors.

More than anything, this seems designed to emphasize not only the Emperor's tastes but filters down into the rank and file as the regard the Navy places upon their female crews.

"It's not riling me," she assures her superior in equally quiet tones even while looking forward to the day she boards the Prometheus again in her own persona and meets that pimple.

Of 4,287 officers and crew, 1,193 women wear the white halters and slanted minis, angled high on the dominant side where their daggers rest and she already knows that none of those brief uniforms she'll see are highlighted by gold trim. Oh for the day when a woman becomes a Naval Officer; Nell is sure she'll never see it. The highest rank a woman can attain is CPO and that took a lot.

They and their new crewmates are quartered in deck six of the battleship, where they are sequestered on their sleep hours and Nell is sure the division is not for the protection of the women's honor but so not one of them will ever have a bit of fun.

Unless, of course, any follow the bent that she and Kensi do; each is perfectly happy with either meat sticks or lips.

x

'Women's Territory' has no such name in the official sense, being no more than rooms where four bunks, stacked with twenty two inches of space between them are shared by twelve women. They find a room marked outside the door with ten names and while Kensi writes their names on the last two lines Nell stows the small black bag that contains her gear, such as it is, on the three inch thick mattress, third down from the top, level with her thighs, leaving the taller Kensi the lowest bunk which she will have to crawl into.

She turns and the three striped faux PO1 is standing before her. The woman cocks her thumb outward, her meaning clear. "Come on, I can't sleep on the floor."

"And had you asked, you might have gotten away with it, but RHIP and we can't show these women that we even know each other."

" _Fine_." She yanks the pack out, shoves it in the lowest bunk and stands with arms folded before her breasts. "Happy?"

"Ecstatic. But you know better."

There are small lockers set into the wall, eight inches high by twelve wide, little more than safe deposit boxes just large enough to admit, with effort and judicious packing, a standard sea pack. Only two remain with green tags in the locks, numbers 11 & 12\. She opens the last, crams her bag in, yanks out the tag, looks around on the too brief uniform for a place to put it and finally has to push it into her breast pocket.

"Let's go, Petite Officer," Kensi says. "Good hunting."

xx

PO2 Betty Willoughby is assigned to Communications, a useful position as it will allow her to review all past messages and monitor new ones. Kensi is the INSIPS Officer on this tour, having replaced the previous Imperial Navy Standard Integrated Personnel System Officer on this tour. It's an equally useful location from which to identify the likely traitor / foreign operative. They'd learned of the switch in assignment for this other woman on the aborted drive in, but the reason for the switch has not been given to anyone aboard and most sailors are too intelligent than to ask.

Those who are not, well, they fall into INCIS' notice.

Grisha and Sam will work openly as INCIS Inquisitors and the women hope that their investigation, typically strong-arm as it will be, will cause enough stir that someone will say the right thing in their hearing. In the meantime, they will continue to do their own searches.

It would be nice for the Undercover Operatives to smoke out the culprit, but the fame – or infamy – of INCIS tactics virtually guarantees that the men will succeed first.

Nonetheless, their basic mission is unchanged. Pride sent them after answers, not a corpse.


	5. Establishment

Chapter Five  
Establishment

The hours that constitute Alpha Shift (0800-1600) for the Battleship INS Prometheus are uneventful to the point of being boring. Their course is set west through territory completely under Imperial control, there is nothing that can oppose them in this half of the planet (and little for that matter on the other half) but discipline must be enforced. Insurrection, disaffection, these rather than outside force are the enemy.

The enforcement of discipline is even more exacting in friendly waters; there is absolutely no opposition and little need to guard against serf and vassal, so the Exec Officer, the Master Chief and the INCIS Inquisitor Afloat each enjoy and employ special power to maintain that discipline.

It was once said by the tactical idiot Napoleon Bonaparte that an army travels on its stomach. More accurately an army or a navy travels on its fear; fear of the consequences of imperfection.

Neither female Inquisitor believes their male counterparts, not being allowed to open information even to the Inquisitor Afloat in the course of their search, are having a boring day.

x

Nell, in her role as the fictitious Betty Willoughby, has few communications duties on a ship traveling through ten thousand nautical miles of its own waters. True, she can access records of previous conversations but she must be very cautious. A new Petite Officer Second Class would not be likely to access such data on her first day aboard and to be caught doing something she should not do by the crew or by one of the cameras set in each upper corner of the room would bring her to the attention of one or more of the ship's officers - or of the I.A.

If so, she would have to face it as Betty Willoughby, not as an INCIS Level Two Inquisitor; not unless she wanted to face her own partners or the consequence of disobeying the Deputy Grand Inquisitor. Given that choice, Geisha Alexandrovich Callen is a more merciful end.

Though INCIS' role is to enforce discipline and obedience among the Sailors and Storm Troopers, it does a damned good job in enforcing it within itself.

But where she is restricted in her actions INCIS can access the data in either of two grand ways. L3 Eric Beale can tap into the Security Feeds of any Navy facility at any moment and play some illicit and unanswerable move or else Callen or Hanna can order a search. As well as she knows them, she's confident they've spent that past 8 hours cutting a swath through the ship.

Over dinner no one, other than a suicidal idiot, opens up to a newcomer, so that newcomer must, through established skills, feign apathy while keeping her ears open and thus learn much.

Much of little, as it turns out, for though quiet words are exchanged between trusted friends about unknown INCIS Inquisitors who question, seemingly at random, men and women of all three shifts and from every division without dropping any clue as to what is sought, this is something she knew last night.

Tactic Alpha Eleven is a classic. Cut that swath through the ship, ask seemingly random questions so widely ranging that no two who are questioned can compare them well enough to get a sense of what is being sought.

Once planted, the stories build and spread, carrying with them apprehension and details sewn together of mixed and poorly tailored cloth.

By the first 24 hours everyone on the ship will know the fearsome Interrogators are seeking someone for some reason and every crewman and woman will be fearful the axe will fall on a friend or, more probably, themselves.

Kensi and Nell, being newcomers, know they have some time before being called to the Question, but when they are it will be either because the technique has born fruit or for them to give their own reports.

With a crew of four thousand and thousands of miles before Australia, that stage will take some time.

x

Slow eaters as they are the women, who had no contact with each other in the Mess, wind up leaving the room within a minute of each other. Kensi is the first and interjects herself into a knot formed at the intersection of two corridors, contributing little to the conversation.

The moment is a cautious one for all. The effectively random (to those who do not make decisions) assignments of the Imperial Navy Personnel have placed them aboard the same ship. They recognize they must work together, perhaps for years, but they are strangers to one another and so there is caution. But while Kensi is a junior officer in INSIPS the others are still from other sections so there is a social buffer of four thousand men and women between them. Therefore, though the conversation is polite if never casual - a lifetime of caution is never cast aside - they can converse without bloodshed.

When Nell approaches and would continue on her way Kensi, who has already established a somewhat gregarious - but not overly so - persona among strangers, draws her attention with a "Hey, didn't I see you berthed in 9-14-5-79?"

Nell stops and the sizing up she gives the taller PO is more intense than the others had given her moments before. Finally, just before the stare could become unfriendly, "Yeah. What of it?"

"We're bunk-mates."

Again that sizing up, upped another which is still so familiar to any two strangers throughout the Empire. The others look on, mildly curious, not holding their breaths but some probably wondering how the petite Petite will handle the encounter.

With distant strangers first moments can be tense, but where the others have the benefit of distance, these two will be rooming together, perhaps even sharing the same bunk on opposing shifts. How far will this go?

The intensity of Nell's stare, the minuteness of her scan from hair to white shoes taking in every centimeter of flesh within the very brief uniform, comes inches from a declaration of hostility if not war when "You're not my type" comes out with enough irony and easing of eyes to calm the moment.

x

They exchange identities, Kensi using her 'Alyssa Duncack' pseudo and the conversation, while still cautious, never again rises to the point of being interesting to their hearers.

In fact, since strangers remain cautious for very long periods after exchanges of towns, assignments and trivialities, the conversation quickly declines past mundane into boring and in due time they find themselves alone.

"Well," Nell says, "we only have to do that a few more times."

"I'd jump overboard first," Kensi assures her. She'd nearly ruined the encounter by bursting out in laughter at her partner's 'not my type' declaration. Last evening had been the most recent disproving of that lie. While each has a very healthy love of males and their very attractive and functional anatomies, being bisexual always assures them of a very satisfying life.

x

"So, what do you have?" Nell asks, at the same moment letting her gaze fall to the slanted middle of the taller woman's white miniskirt.

"Nothing," she says firmly, intent upon remaining on business, taking advantage of the unknown but very brief time they'll be allowed to talk unheard. She turns left and the pair start down the corridor. While it is true that this is a huge ship and they are amply well equipped should they desire to turn the assignment into interrogations that Grisha Callen and Samuel Hanna are decidedly ill provided for, their introduction has bought them only a very few minutes to exchange information, and this is best done in motion rather than standing up corridor from a Mess already gearing up for Beta Shift's breakfasts.

"The Personnel Records I accessed are consistent for a ship full of loyal Imperial Sailors. Average age of the crew is 18.7, officers run the expected range all the way up to the Captain's 57.3 and Second Officer's 53.8."

"What about First?"

"44.3."

"Interesting. An up-and-comer?"

"Could be. That's the kind of thing an INSIPS PO on her first day will attract attention accessing. Eric could run interference–"

"But he'd get away with that once or twice," Nell reminds her, recalling her days in Ops. While the man can do this work with impunity – to notice INCIS going into your systems is not a good idea for a crew and to block the effort is suicidal – their intent is to be unnoticed.

Callen and Hanna can take the broad strokes. If they are going to do anything it must be with the fine strokes of a three hair brush, not a roller.

"Coming through!"

x

Four men come up fast from behind them and the corridor is so narrow that the women must press their backs against opposite bulkheads for the men to fit past. When they are gone Nell is red faced, virtually steaming but sees Kensi has her hands crossed low before her upward slanted white skirt.

"What's wrong?" the tall woman asks with too innocent a tone. Nell can only move her lips, for no words can come out that can be picked up by unseen microphones. "Don't let it bother you."

" _Don't let it_ –!"

With a wiggle of her fingers she draws attention to her hands crossed before her miniskirt hem. "One tried, it didn't work. They were Chiefs; you were right to keep quiet but you soon learn the little tricks."

"I'll show them a little _trick_."

"Don't say it."

"With ten lashes on the main deck for breaking discipline and making a scene? No way."

"Besides, it's not _all_ bad. No rule that you can't enjoy it."

x

She manages to force some of the color from her face, finally to admit "If I cared about a Career here I _might,_ but with a Lieutenant or above."

"You did that from a Five to a Two through Eric and Grisha, but it's not _only_ about careers, you know."

"It is for me."

"Yeah, you and so many other women. I get my fun where I can."

"Not _interested_." She glares after where the men had gone.

She has no problem with the lie, not even with her best friend. She and Kensi started nearly together, Kensi preceding her by only a few weeks, but in life only a fool tells even a best friend the whole truth. It makes relationships complicated but only that caution keeps one safe. Those inclined to slip and tell the truth too often are rarely around long enough to tell anyone too much of anything.

"You should be." The words carry much of warning. "You can't afford to stand out." Her hand, in illustrating her point, brushes across Nell's nipple through her halter top. Nell looks left and right; for the moment they're alone.

"I do do it for more than advancement." She admits, and to prove it she grabs and tugs the woman's arm.

"I can't promote you to a One," Kensi says quietly. "Callen determines ranks."

"Fu wi that!" Nell mumbles against her lips. The moment is brief, the love is not.

xxx

To fit in with the usual routine of shipboard life it's time to make their way to the Laundry-Dispensary where they'll pick up tomorrow's assigned uniforms from the huge room, one of the biggest single spaces on the vessel where uniforms are hung by size. All new crew pick up their first day uniforms with the proper insignia, which set they already have, as well as more personal items. One gives the assigned codes and suitable upper and lower suits (far less space in the room and of material allotted to women) together with underwear are dispensed over a half-door. For new crew there is always a long line, particularly when the inevitable errors must be manually corrected.

Kensi and Nell time their wait at 24 minutes but the choices of outer garments are not unduly unpleasant, not when the entire uniform is generally disliked. The redesign dictated by Emperor Todd Akin two years ago had been unpopular and most wearers look forward either openly to a new design or quietly to a new Emperor.

They step some dozen yards to an intersection and take the moment to open and check their bags. Kensi reaches in and draws out - "Oh Hell No," she says, reading the garment marked with 'Alyssa Duncack'. She holds up the offending garment to her chest. "What is this, pasties on strings? This'll be like putting my tits in bondage."

"Don't knock it until you've tried it."

"Oh sure." She tosses the material back in, grateful she'd brought enough for a few days.

"I got cowchutes."

"Come again?"

She pulls out her own. "Parachutes for udders."

"Well, we're the new girls. Had to come somehow."

x

They trade pieces and Nell checks her alternative to her chest. "Well," she admits a heavy concession, "it's still small but at least my boobs won't be purple by breakfast like yours would be."

"I thought 'don't knock it till you try it'."

"I have, with plenty of men. Only one I'll never let at them again is Callen; he squeezes too fukien hard."

Kensi remembers her first and last (willing) brutal time with the sexual sadist. After that first encounter she'd learned the lesson very thoroughly and when possible she kept her distance. She'd ultimately learned, after too many ambushes, to keep her hand upon the pommel of her adamantium dagger even whenever walking through their own base.

Nell had kept at it, wanting that rise from Three, through 'interview' after 'interview' until she'd finally gotten her Two, and she suspects the woman had won it only after having been so used out she was physically unable to endure another 'conversation'.

She wonders if her friend would survive her promotion to One. She only knows the woman has not asked for it.

She's glad to be a One but never wants another promotion, if there could be one, as long as both she and Callen live.

"Well, maybe I can find a decent trade," she says, coming back into the conversation.

"Maybe you can both move on," says a blonde woman who pushes between them and continues down the corridor. "Honestly, you'd think this is your first time on a Navy ship. _Smart_ women bring their own."


	6. Forty Two

Chapter Six  
Forty Two

"I don't know what they want."

"Don't matter what they want, they don't want me" is the essence of the conversations at 0630 when Nell Jones / Betty Willoughby sets down her tray at a vacant spot on the long Mess Hall table and tries to convince herself, after a long wait in the queue, that she's hungry enough to want the scrambled eggs, hash and coffee that she was issued.

The hungry part is easy enough. The challenge comes, on sniffing the dark gray gloop the servers called coffee is 'is she hungry enough'?

A bite of the eggs, which are at least yellow (somewhat) convinces her that she's not.

"Just wrinkle your nose, try to ignore your buds and push it through before you can taste it," the blond man, white uniform proclaiming him a Machinist Mate 3, advises from opposite her.

"How can anyone ruin eggs?"

"I think," the man on her right says, "that we ate the chicken on the way in, that it died of –"

"Don't say it," appeals the black man on his right.

"I hear it skips a generation, anyway," says another man to Nell's first adviser's left says, "so you should be safe." She tries that man's suggestion and decides it had been wasted.

A small jar with dark red flakes appears from her left. She recognizes the scent. "Red pepper? Good for pizza, but–"

"We go through tons of it on every cruise. Enough and your taste buds are stunned, crawl into a corner and beg to die.

Lunch is five hours away and yesterday's, presumably made with the freshest food from the mainland, had not been spectacular. She sprinkles a generous portion onto the yellowish concoction, waits a moment for it to take effect and in the meantime samples some coffee.

She considers pouring some of the peppers into that.

She tries the improved eggs and as fire sears her tongue and tiny miners set to work upon her sinuses with picks and dynamite she decides she can hold out for five hours after all.

x

"Don't know what who wants?" she forces out past the flames as she sops up her tears with a napkin, glad that the Imperial Navy doesn't allow mascara. She also knows that this many men are not being nice to her only because she's a newcomer, but because she's an attractive newcomer – aka fresher meat than what's served for meals here.

But there are distinct advantages to go with that and she's well used to them. She's not averse to a little flirting; all in the course of duty, of course. And if it should yield some entertainment on the side, so much the better. Kensi is right; not everything comes for a career. Now all that matters is choosing the right target and time.

x

"INCIS" her well intentioned benefactor across the table says before taking in a generously laden forkful of reddened eggs. She sees he swallows quickly.

"They've been aboard since we left port," the Sailor who'd shared the peppers informs her, his tone sourer than the coffee. "Surprised you haven't heard."

"What have they been doing?"

"Bastards look like they're going through everyone," the man to her right gripes. "Pulling in people on Alpha and Beta all day, the bastards."

"Hesh! You got no sense, man?" the sailor opposite him demands.

"No Incisors here," he declares.

"You never know," her original assistant says. "We took on seventeen new people this port."

"I could even be an INCIS spy," Nell offers.

"You?" he scoffs. "You're too nice."

"Ain't no way you're one of those bastards."

"Man, you keep talking like that, you do it somewheres else where we won't get blood all over us when they haul you away. And you," he turns to Nell, "don't even joke about such a thing."

Time to move in while slamming them with a major distraction. "Seriously," she looks to the complainer down the row. She likes the ones who speak up stupidly. "Maybe I really _am_ an Undercover Spy. Or _maybe_ ," she milks, "I'm going to take you below decks and interrogate you, dig out your _darkest_ secrets."

"Oooooooo," from several would not mind being interrogated down below by the comely Communications officer.

"Wait your turns," she tells each with high promise. "If your secrets are worth it, maybe I'll interrogate each of you by the time we reach Australia."

But she has already made her choice. Complainer sounds like he has an axe to grind, her favorite kind of subject. It won't take her as long to find out what, if anything, he has as it had with Duchane.

xx

There are two others in Communications for Alpha shift, another Petite Officer Two of senior standing and a green crewman so obviously on his first tour that she almost feels sorry for him, for her counterpart has taken upon himself the kid's training and Nell, who never went to the Imperial Naval Academy in New York City, is sure the instructions and explanations are wholly unlike those from any textbook ever published.

Maybe the man is having fun. Maybe the result of this tutelage will provide some amusement. Maybe when her mission is over she'll engage in some fun of her own, making clear to her counterpart the consequences of malicious sabotage before the fact.

The Intraship Com on the board beeps, she touches the control and the screen lights with '42'. She turns off the signal, hardly crediting the good fortune while making for the door.

"Where are you going?"

'Damn, he would pick now to start being an intelligent boss.' "Personnel wants me, something about an unsigned form."

"Deal with it later."

"With INCIS snooping through the ship and I can't prove I am who I say I am? Put me on Report; better that than being put to the Question." She exits the cabin, closes the heavy sea door on whatever his answer may be. If this thing is settled before they're halfway to Hawaii, she can be back in proper black tomorrow.

xxx

Kensi is waiting for her outside the INSIPS office but starts away as soon as she enters the section, refuses to answer any inquiry until they reach a door. Kensi pulls it open, Nell follows her into

"The Head? You can't find a better choice?"

Kensi checks quickly under the half doors of three stalls. "Nothing as private. Listen. Crewman Nickolaus Tigan," she hands her a three inch square formal ID photograph, "took Leave with the bulk of the crew. Here he is since his return."

The eight by ten print is from a Security camera in the quarters shared by Tigan and three other men, this one a shot of him from the front, the next from the rear. It shows the shirtless man preparing to lay down in his upper berth. Nell compares the man as well as she can from behind and hands the papers back. "So? Same guy."

"This is from after he returned yesterday." She hands back the larger picture as well as another of equal size, also in the cabin, also on the bunk, also shirtless. "This is from before he left."

"This is all you've done in thirty-odd hours, look at dirty pictures of topless sailors?"

"You should be glad I did." She holds up one large picture. "Before," and the other beside it, "after."

Nell examines them more closely, finally shrugs. "Very sexy, if you're into that but he's not my type either so, once again for good measure: So?"

"So look at the back of the left shoulder."

The high definition (Security never allows uncertainty) shows a dime sized circular black mole in the recent image that, despite the change in angle, is not present in the previous one, and since no one ever goes to have a mole put _on_ "They micronized the data and hid it under an artificial mole."

"Who notices a mole?"

"You do," she hands the pictures back, "and from now on I'm changing in the dark."

"Won't help."

"Yeah." Security systems see better than that God thing, when it existed, could. "Let's see Crewman Tigan. I really want the name of his Dermatologist."


	7. Tigan

Chapter Seven  
Tigan

Tracking Nickolaus Tigan to his duty station on Deck 9 was a depressingly simple hunt. He and nine other men are responsible for keeping the ship clean and tidy, a suitably innocuous, unnoticed thing aboard a battleship. They are not in Weapons Control, have nothing to do with Armament, Navigation, Engineering, Radar or anything essential. They are very literally 'Swabbies', Conscripts who generally exhibit the skills of ballast, men you never see unless you trip over a mop.

To the women these men, Tigan and perhaps all his counterparts, have the perfect Undercover jobs. Unseen, unregarded, talked around and never remembered, they should be the ones Security and the IA should keep under constant watch. The fact that the Inquisitor Afloat may not be surveilling Tigan is enough to grant Deputy Grand Inquisitor Pride's wisdom not to bring the man into this Investigation.

Nell looks forward to the next phase of their Operation, the Inspection of their Colleague's files and efficiency.

A check of the lone blackboard in the vacant Janitorial Services room where the men are based had yielded Tigan's assignment: Deck 9 from bow to midship and they find him wielding a mop at the bow in the second of three corridors that span the length of the ship. As noted, it was a depressingly easy hunt.

They approach from behind, no one they pass giving them any more attention than two attractive, white haltered and mini-skirted women would garner. Fifty feet from the end of the corridor their target works, his back to them. Kensi halts, the stop making Nell pause as well.

"What?"

Rather than answer, Kensi lifts the hem of the long side of the slanted skirt and removes, from a strap high on her thigh, a black rectangular device two inches wide by four long and lifts the lid to access the keyboard and screen.

"Come on," Nell protests the unfairness.

"Got to." Keying the signal to Callen's device, she transmits '6', the code for 'apprehending suspect' followed by the four numbers stenciled on the left wall five feet forward of their position. She lifts her hem and returns the device.

"We can still take him," Nell declares. He's their prey, the men do not need nor do they deserve the credit.

"We are."

x

Crewman Tigan's mop arcs are from bulkhead to bulkhead, his half step path from the end of the corridor would eventually back him to the women but they do not wait. Kensi, on his rightward stroke, steps around his left side in front while Nell assumes a position by and behind his right shoulder.

"Crewman Nickolaus Tigan," Kensi hardly needs to ask but the appearance of both women halts his cleaning arcs.

"Yeah?"

"INCI–" Tigan's right elbow comes up and back between Nell's eyes and then his left foot comes forward and up under Kensi's skirt.

It's a fallacy that anatomical differences do not mean there are no consequences to so vicious an attack. Though the result is different the intense pain is as debilitating and before Kensi crashes to her knees, hands pressed too late to the devastated spot, Tigan runs past her.

Nell, having been driven backward, lowers her bloody left hand from her face in time to see Tigan leap over her partner's collapsing body. She is in pursuit by the time Kensi is left bent forward, trying to force her eyes open.

There's a companionway at the end of the corridor heading down to deck 10. He takes the steep steps several at a time and Nell, furious at the pain in her face and the useless chase (where can he go?) is determined to bring this to a rapid conclusion.

He disappears down the steps by the time she reaches the edge and leaps, executes a taekwondo flying side kick, left leg tucked up and right at full extension and sails above as the man leaves the steps. He'd have to turn back to make the rest of the ship or the next companionway, he'll never escape her but he's a fraction faster than she expects.

She catches him not with a head blow which would push him forward but against the back of his neck and the impact on the soft flesh carries him down before her. She lands, left foot on his back and right behind his neck and the double _crack_ and crunching _snap_ are loud in the confined end of the corridor.

It's also his last noise as she steps off and turns to look down at the body. If Nickolaus Tigan is not dead, the closing of his trachea by breaking the supporting muscles that keep the air passage aligned and open, together with the paralysis from severed spine means death in seconds as heart and lungs cease working.

Duchane had lasted less than the time it had taken him to fall.

x

The noises now come from past her right where Kensi, holding to the rail and moving, Nell thinks, quite carefully, descends the companionway. They step shoulder to shoulder beside the body. "Was it necessary?"

"An accident," Nell admits. She looks right and up at the taller woman. "I wanted to knock him senseless."

"I hope that mole has the microdata thing in it, but Pride wanted him alive for interrogation." The image of the Inquisitors who had been disciplined for their failure with the sailors they had been ordered to interrogate is vivid in their minds.

Kensi pulls her dagger from her right thigh sheath, Nell steps a half step left so Blye can crouch low over the body. She uses the blade to cut away the back of his white shirt, gets the point under the black mark and works the mole up. She doesn't remove it, there's enough light in this secluded spot and what she sees satisfies her. She straightens and they stand facing the corpse. "Callen and Hanna will be here soon." She looks right down the corridor that transverses the ship. There are hundreds of moving bodies but no one pays them mind. The knee knockers at each doorway help to obscure the body from those most distant, the stairs provide the best cover for it - for now. "I'll help as much as I can, but I'm not sure what I can say to save you."

"I don't want you to say anything to save me." Nell's hand arcs fast to slam left of center between her breasts. Shock greater than the excruciating agony holds Kensi's wide eyes on the clenched hand and silver pommel. A titanic leftward yank rips the atrociously keen adamantium blade along the path between her ribs and out her side and blood gushes out the rift to splash upon the body before them.

Kensi can only shift her eyes left and the last thing she sees as darkness closes in are the eyes of her partner.

x

Nell, holding the adamantium dagger after it ripped through and out her partner's side, watches Kensi fall as her knees give way. Her visage never changes from that look of wide eyed astonishment as she slams down upon her knees on the deck, the gush of blood easing to a flow as she pitches forward and lands upon the motionless sailor.

Nell feels the hot wetness on her fingers and turns her hand so the blood will drip off the blade's point onto the deck.

"What the hell happened here?" a man's familiar voice demands. She looks right to where black uniformed Callen and Hanna, at the head of a phalanx of white uniformed men and women, slow to a stop. Hanna turns, clears back the crowd so Nell can speak to her superiors.

She has to explain, among other things, her bloody face and soon-to-blacken eyes. "We tried to take him but he fought away. While I was stunned Kensi chased him down the companionway but there was an accident she said, and by the time I got here he was dead.

"Kensi found, under a fake mole, the information he was carrying. But she also knew how angry Deputy Grand Director Pride will be at losing whatever Tigan knew. He'd probably torture her to death for it. She asked me to spare her, to give her a quick death rather than execution by slow torture."

They know no one, not even Henrietta Lange, can save someone from the exemplary punishment that Pride will mete out for so extreme a failure. The last Inquisitor to face such a fate under Granger for so titanic a debacle had been L1 Lauren Hunter nearly a year ago. She'd survived eleven days of relentless chastisement before succumbing to dehydration halfway through her sentence.

"You did right."


	8. Epilogue

Epilogue

Seventeen hours after the conclusion of the first part of the investigation – IA Baime's failure to discern the matter aboard his own ship will take longer to resolve – L2 Nell Jones stands at Attention before Deputy Grand Inquisitor Duane Cassius Pride. Seated behind Henrietta Lange's desk, the foot stool kicked out of his way, the tall man looks down upon the stiff Inquisitor. Lange's arrangement would leave her above eye level to the petite woman; Pride stares down upon her like Zeus reigning upon his Olympian throne.

Lange stands silent at his side.

"Have you anything more to add?"

Nell, back in her immaculate black and glittering silver uniform, cover tucked under her left arm, has held her Attention posture for so long that her spine begs for mercy, most of the plea coming toward the end of the report. Her legs had first ached, then hurt, then screamed and now shriek in agony while her feet, having born the unchanged pressure for so long, without even the risk of slight flexing, are numb. She cannot feel anything past her ankles, there may be nothing there by now, and when she does take her first step, if she ever does in this lifetime, it will be at best a spasmodic stagger.

Until the point where she and Kensi had come up behind Nickolaus Tigan her report had been detailed, complete and precise and she fought at the end to keep the same expression and tones as she had kept throughout.

It was exactly the story she had given Callen and Hanna, the strict truth except for who had done what, She stiffens her spine further, fights to maintain the perfect posture she'd adopted over an hour ago, for she knows that if her report contains any imperfection she will never come off Attention; the Enforcers in the corners of the room behind her will, at a signal from Pride, ensure that.

"No, Deputy."

"So in the end Inquisitor Kensi Blye, knowing she faced punishment, possibly Terminal Punishment if the information retrieved does not bring the Investigation forward, _asked_ you to give her a quick death."

"Yes, Deputy Grand."

"And you did it."

"Yes, Grand Inquisitor." She'd hoped that if she continues in this line she can say something he likes, something to please his ego. Her problem is that she's run out of things.

Everything below her waist, with the exception of her spine, shrieks or is dead. Her spine feels ready to snap.

"And it did not occur to either of you that she might have faced an alternate fate."

"Sir, I cannot speak to the mind of Level One Inquisitor Blye. I could only obey her orders."

Silence.

Staring.

Pain.

Staring.

Silence.

"Very well. You acted properly, and such of the assignment as could be fulfilled has been. We will continue with San Diego. Meanwhile, as this facility needs three, at minimum, I promote you to Level One Inquisitor."

She wants to scream, to shriek, to gush like a schoolgirl and fights hard to bury her change of tone under a hill of boulders. "Thank you, Deputy Grand Inquisitor."

She can't help but notice, in the midst of her orgasmic joy and with a keenly developed sense of survival that Pride had not so much as glanced at Lange, standing at his side, before making his proclamation about her staff.

Pride signals to one of the black armored men who stand in the rear corners of the room. "Take her to where she can be outfitted in her golds."

"Yes, Deputy Grand," the man says.

Joy overwhelming the agony in her body, Nell manages to turn without staggering, her finally moving legs screeching in agony, and comes to bear upon the man before her.

Henrietta Lange's bodyguard Martin Deeks has not changed expression from his most common one but she realizes, in this single instant of contact before he moves to lead her off, that his cool, dead eyes are not so cool and not so dead.

.

.

*** Fin ***


End file.
